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Happiness! [Security]

26 (31%)

Freedom! [Liberty]

58 (69%)

Total Members Voted: 84

[Nikov]

I don't know if anyone injected this quote into the discussion, yet, as I'm just joining in and haven't bothered reading all five pages, but I believe Benjamin Franklin put it best when he said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I always took this to mostly back the second amendment or economic freedom. Considering he arrived a teenager in Philedelphia with little more than a few bread rolls in his pockets he seems to me the ultimate capitalist.

[PTTG??]

I would rather live unhappily in freedom than comfortably in chains- but ultimately, I would never be happy restricted, so it's a false dichotomy. It's either freedom or neither, now isn't it?

[Zangi]

Guy 1: "We are safe, big brother protects us."

Guy 2: "All I had to do was give up my right to privacy."

Guy 1: "Yea, big brother looks over all our shoulders, protecting us from the terrorists, traitors and criminals."

Guy 2: "Justice is given out without the red tape. Big brother does not have to waste resources dealing with our enemies and the criminals."

Hey, sounds just like the CCS.... or somewhere closer to Russia.

EDIT: Fixed stuff

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Guy 1: "We are safe, big brother King Reagan protects us."

Guy 2: "All I had to do was give up my right to privacy."

Guy 1: "Yea, big brother King Reagan looks over all our shoulders, protecting us from the Liberal terrorists, Liberal traitors, Liberal criminals, and Liberals."

Guy 2: " Conservative Justice is given out without the red tape. Big brother King Regan does not have to waste resources dealing with our enemies and the Liberal criminals."

Hey, sounds just like the CCS.... or somewhere closer to Russia.

EDIT: Fixed stuff

Now it sounds like the CCS. And it isn't exactly a false dichtomy, if you were to be drugged and retarded into a state where you wouldn't realize your loss of freedom. And you'd be happy, like the Proles of 1984.

[Strife26]

I don't know if anyone injected this quote into the discussion, yet, as I'm just joining in and haven't bothered reading all five pages, but I believe Benjamin Franklin put it best when he said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  It saddens me to see our government repeatedly take away our freedoms for 'temporary safety', such as the DMCA, ACTA agreement, increased airport security (such as seizing and searching laptops), and the like.  Thus, I vote freedom on this issue, because without these essential freedoms, how do we know we are safe from our own government?

Where do you draw the line at essential?

[Belathus]

Where do you draw the line at essential?

That's a pretty good question.  I'm probably more liberal than Ben was, and I mourn the loss of nearly any freedom that we currently have.

I understand the need for increasing our security and the like, but I also feel that ways should be found to increase security without sacrificing our rights and freedoms.

I suppose, lately, I feel strongest about copyright laws in America.  I don't think that going around and downloading copyrighted movies obsessively shouldn't be punished, but our friends at the MPAA and RIAA want to permanently remove access to the Internet for those found to be infringing.  Many people, including myself at one time, depended on the Internet for their primary source of income.  Access to the Internet is becoming an essential need to us (and therefore, an essential right), and is one of the last bastions for our freedom of speech, yet, it is being pushed to be removed.  The ACTA agreement has terms for a three-strikes rule for Internet access, and I feel that these things should be barred from occurring.

However, I do not feel that laws such as those that limit our speed on highways are an unnecessary restriction of freedom.  Yes, we give up freedom for security there, but those that would abuse that freedom can cause significant danger to others.  In addition, the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico very well could've been prevented, I understand, with the installation of a safety cut-off valve that is a legal requirement in many countries, but only optional here in America.  I would not oppose the requirement of it being installed, as it prevents future disasters from occurring.

[Strife26]

And that's a pretty good answer.

I've got nothing else to say, other than bland agreement (except for that liberal part)/

[Grakelin]

It's a fairly basic political science theory that to have equality, you have to trade up freedom, and visa versa.

[Nikov]

I have come to the conclusion that nobody knows what the hell the word right means anymore. People seem to think they have a right to food, clothing and shelter in the United States. There's no such rights. Rights protect you from government action against you, not force the government to take action for you.

[PTTG??]

How about this: Each person must have the maximum liberty, except the liberty to take those liberties from others. For instance, everyone should be free from the threat of unessicary harm; thus noone has the right to attack someone else without provocation.
 
The problem with this theory is that the maximum is hard to define; should everyone have the right to health and comfort, meaning that noone has the right to withold these things from annother?
 
Libritarianism is a good place to start, but it lacks specifics. We already know that more freedom is better. A good design for a system is one which defines exact systems for the balancing of rights and responsibilities.

[Phmcw]

I have come to the conclusion that nobody knows what the hell the word right means anymore. People seem to think they have a right to food, clothing and shelter in the United States. There's no such rights. Rights protect you from government action against you, not force the government to take action for you.

In Belgium and in France those are right; you'll alway have a salary, whatever happen of minimum 750 Euro's in Belgium, for instance. If you cannot find a house, the state have cheap ones available.
In France, right to housing may become "opposable". I don't know how to translate that world but i mean hat if you cannot find a shelter, you can sue the state.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

How about this: Each person must have the maximum liberty, except the liberty to take those liberties from others. For instance, everyone should be free from the threat of unessicary harm; thus noone has the right to attack someone else without provocation.
 
The problem with this theory is that the maximum is hard to define; should everyone have the right to health and comfort, meaning that noone has the right to withold these things from annother?
 
Libritarianism is a good place to start, but it lacks specifics. We already know that more freedom is better. A good design for a system is one which defines exact systems for the balancing of rights and responsibilities.

Well, I am one of those who believe in those liberal values (also summarized in "My right to move my fist ends where your nose begins."). Comfort is not actually a property you can put into a right, I think, as it is too ill-defined. Health can be described more aptly via "protected from getting physically or psychologically harmed" - in effect, no one should have the right to diminish your health condition, but you can't force others to do anything to actually further your health, either.

Note, however, that such liberal ideas are concerned not only about the state vs. the individual but also and foremost individual vs. individual. Indeed, a liberal state needs the strength to put limitations on personal freedoms to protect more important personal freedoms (as in the example of the movement of the fist as compared to the health of the target).

At least that is the way I feel about that aspect.

And I am with the camp saying that happiness requires freedom.

Deathworks

[Retro]

Apologies if this goes on a bit long, but if I may posit a hypothetical scenario:

You are in a dream world. This dream world is not fuzzy and vague like your nightly dreams, however; it is vivid, marvellous, and lively. You have achieved an incredible state of lucidity - this perfect dream, in which everything happens with great clarity, is yours to control. Everything you could ever want to happen in your life happens. You become a local hero after running into a burning building and saving a kid. You meet the girl/guy of your dreams, and eventually enter a very happy long-term relationship with him/her and marry. Your relationship with your family could not be better, and you have many very close friends. Later in life you develop superpowers. You are chosen to be part of an astronaut team that takes a shuttle to an asteroid and blows it up, heroically saving the world despite great personal loss. This world is not without loss, for that matter; people die, but never meaninglessly or arbitrarily - every death is a moment of redemption, self-sacrifice, personal growth, or forgiveness. Later you colonize Saturn and turn it into the best mansion ever with a huge pool and a helicopter. Many love you, and your rivals have grown to respect you despite continually butting heads with you. Every aspect of this dream is utterly yours to control; the best moments never pass by too quickly and you can revisit any memory at any given time. Your life in your dream world is completely and impossibly perfect.

You are also living in a tube full of science goop with wires attached to your brain in the distant future.

One day you find out, through some contrived circumstance such as you somehow catching a glimpse of the lab you are in, that you are in this tube. The dream world then resumes. You are faced with the options: Stay in the dream world, or leave the tube and be thrown into the real, unknown world around you.

Now, the important thing to remember about this is that your dream world does not give you 'fake' happiness, nor does anything feel 'wrong' such as in films like The Matrix. It is perfect. It's not 'too' perfect or any of that; living in your lucid dream world makes you happier than you could ever otherwise be. It is not a world in which there are no troubles, either; you could give yourself trials to overcome and subsequently overcome them and grow as a person for it as well as feeling a sense of accomplishment. However, the one thing giving you pause is that you know it is a dream world.

If you chose to stay in the dream world, you would never again see or retain knowledge of the real world. You would forget you'd ever seen it and would not harbor doubts about the world you were in. The computer glitch would be repaired and there would be no chance for you to ever see the 'real' world by accident again. However, if you chose to leave the dream and enter into the real world (and no one would stop you; you'd be allowed out quite amicably), the world, though real, would not be yours. It would be somewhere in the future, a dirty, gritty world in which you could make a living for yourself, but it would be hard, and quite likely to be entirely miserable. You would have no connection with it; this would be a world in which time moved on without you. And of course you would never be able to return to the tube and the dream world.

Obviously I am asking which one you would choose. However, to differentiate between typical Hollywood presentations of this dilemma (see: Abre Los Ojos, The Matrix), I must stress again that the dream world is perfect - and not a general idea of perfection, a personalized perfection crafted by your subconscious and imagination for you alone. It doesn't feel wrong, fake, etc; it is not somewhere you would ever want to leave had you not know the real world was out there. Similarly, the real world does not bring with it redemption nor hope nor meaning - it is in all likelihood quite shitty, and you are aware of this before being presented with the choice.

tl;dr The one and only thing the real world has going for it is that it is real. Which do you choose?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

An interesting scenario you propose, Retro.

For me personally, the decision would depend on the answer to the question "Why?". Or to be more precise whether I can trust that they will actually allow my dream to continue if I put myself under their control again.

If I had confidence that the dream would continue, I would probably choose the dream - after all, it seems real to me, so what is there more to ask for? My point is that we only assume that the real world is real on basis of the stimuli our brain receives, so reality itself is on a somewhat doubtful basis.

I hope this makes somewhat sense. It is rather late here and I am a bit tired (^_^;;

Deathworks

[Phmcw]

Real. No doubt. I seek truth above everything else.

But I find a problem in most definitions of freedom :  They only consider freedom from poeple.
When I say I want freedom, it's also against natural hindrances.
I will then consider that paying for universal health care is an obligation that bring me freedom, for instance.
Or that paying for the RMI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_minimum_d%27insertion is bringing me freedom as being both a failsafe, and a way to avoid a fair share of criminality.